Tag Archives: humiliation

Was it just her, or had life begun to feel like an army of ants crawling through one’s capillaries? Did enthusiasm eventually give room to tiredness, when overcrowded by one’s disappointments? She watched the cautionary tale of her mother’s wilted curiosity; sitting in the downward-turned corners of her mouth, waiting to expire, along with the last of her youth? Waiting —

Until There Was None.

If ever mother had the patience, the awareness and the discipline enough to write her autobiography — for, surely, she had the vanity enough! — that should’ve been its tittle. Until There Was None.

But the joy: Where had it gone from her? There would still be moments of visible glee, some days — a sort of tightly wound hysteria; the same inside job that made her mother’s face quiver and the loose skin of her arms shake after each gesture. She’d be like that in front of her girlfriends when seeking their alliance via pity; or in front of the 17th Century paintings in the galleries of Eastern Germany. (Then, she would always speak to Nola, lecturing, lying, not knowing how to stop.) The sight of it — Nola eventually found herself despising (in men especially, much later): of something pushing — being pushed — past one’s irritability, beyond the limit of tolerance and truth. Strained. Pushed. Perpetually trying.

Silence and walking away, to Nola, seemed easier. And it was reasonable, in theory, for people to coexist in a peaceful fulfillment of their basic needs. But then, they would always tangle themselves up in the ideas of the pursuit of their own happiness, where flaunting of entitlement and justice would become a sport. The calmness of a grateful life had long surpassed her mother — that woman was way, way far down the line. And all there was to live by — was a long list of her grievances and other people’s debts.

“You’re just like your father!” her mother threw at Nola, as if being calm and good was somehow indecent. Once Nola turned twelve, however, there wouldn’t be much left to hurl at her expense. Because before, when the two women found themselves alone in the house, mom reached for anything to throw: her father’s rain boots, the ribbed hose from the Soviet-made (read: nearly useless) washing machine; wet laundry; mom’s patent leather belt from the fur coat that she’d demanded for her thirtieth birthday.

One time, unrooted by her madness, the woman tipped a pot of cold cabbage soup that had been sitting on the stove, waiting for her father’s dinnertime. She had been panicking in the kitchen — (mom always panicked, in the kitchen) — and when she found her words surpassing their brutality, she speedily relayed her gaze from one sharp object to the next; and after an unsuccessful search, reached up behind and steadily poured the pot of cold liquid onto Nola’s head. The slimy cabbage crawled under the collar, under the skin; and the orange, chalky layer of frozen oil tangled up in her hair and stayed there for weeks to come. When finally, most of the liquid hit the floor, Nola looked up: Not one, but two women stood there, drenched in terrible humiliation.

For the first time, that night, Nola had gone beyond forgiveness. Mom was susceptible to losing her control, she realized; but from some losses, one could not come back.

“You’re just like her father!”

Blunt objects or her mother’s limbs ungracefully ended their trajectories anywhere along Nola’s small body. If she tipped over, mom dragger her by the hair to rooms with better lighting, where harsher punishment ensued. While mother pushed and pushed and pushed — the child stood, or lied still, in silence. She learned to receive. She bared. She endured. And secretly she hoped that surrender would make her mother slow down. So visible was mother’s sorrow, so palpable — unhappiness, that from behind the raised arm with which Nola guarded softer places, she pitied her aggressor. She waited for the feeling of tremendous heat in all the new swellings. She’d welcome them, eventually giving herself over to resignation, and to sleep. A strange bliss would be found at the end of every horror. For one was never given more than one could handle.

In those days, Nola still could still portion out the world into manageable pixels. There would anger. Disappointments. A one unhappy woman. Through repetition, Nola learned that mother’s love was functioning through let down expectations. If one was loved by her — one owed her, forever. The closer Nola neared her own womanhood, the more difficult, the more unbearable would become that love — and debt; until one day, none in her family could ever able undo, unsay the things that they had thrown at each other, in an attack or self-defense. And in the loss of reason between all cause and effect, it would begin to feel like pure insanity.

And then, one summer, mom had admitted herself to a resort on the Ukrainian Republic’s shore, famous for housing patients of political insanity and tuberculosis. She dropped off Nola at the house of her in-laws, called up her husband and said that she had lost the sight of “her own woman”, and that she was going away, to find her self, for an indefinite amount of time.

Unheard of! Scandal! Her father’s mother ranted for about a week. But quite quickly, the old woman focused on saving the family’s face and made up more suitable stories about her daughter-in-law’s passage.

“Yeah, a bleeding ulcer. I know: that poor thing! She hadn’t eaten for a month!”

“A teacher’s conference attended by the Ministry of Education. She’s getting a Hero of Labor.”

But in her own house, behind her mother’s back, the old woman talked. She called her names for every single time she found Nola staring out of the window or writing letters to no address that mother left behind.

“A flea-ridden bitch — that’s what that woman is!” the old woman muttered on repeat, when she discovered a clump of tangled hair above the nape of Nola’s neck which Nola harvested for nearly a year by then. The knot had grown so large, that during the summer, she began to pin her grandma’s rhinestone brooches into it.

No remedy was masterful enough to get that thing out! Lord knows, grandma tried! The naked old woman labored and puffed in the wet steam of her bathhouse, her deflated breasts flapping above Nola’s shoulders, like freshly baked Georgian lavashes. After two hours of brushing, oiling, lathering; of pulling and of being pulled; of swearing, sweating, renouncing; and baring and receiving — the hair had to be cut out; and Nola walked away with half of it missing from the back of her head and a headache that took days to sleep off.

The story tilted then. Inside her family, she never would be able to find much calm. That night, unable to find a spot on her scalp that wasn’t raw and throbbing, with the face down in her pillow, Nola would begin to plot her own escape, with or without her hair.

And now, here it was: Her thick and magical, red hair! It had began to slip out of its follicles and clog up all the drains in the apartment; and after every shower, the water drained slowly, allowing for the soap scum to settle on the walls of her tub, like growth rings on a cut down tree.

Must color mother’s hair, she decided. The shower head was dripping at an even pace against the standing pool of water, in the bathroom. Mom lost all memory. Her dignity did not belong to her. It mattered to the living though — to those who were living, trying, still — so, Nola owed someone that.

A girl with an unused-up face was working at the counter of Rite-Aid. She seemed to be in training, still; wearing that horrid polyester polo shirt made in China. It was too large on her, too loose; un-pretty, untucked — and without a name tag.

“You’re fine for today,” her manager must’ve told her in the morning, when he completed her “uniform check”. “But after the training is over, you must remember to wear it, everyday.”

The fucking name tag! That’s the rule. There are always rules, in jobs like this.

I often squint at those tiny plaques that sadly dangle by their pins on chests of any customer service personnel. I try to decipher them, figuring out the pronunciation; and I try to guess the origin. Sometimes, the names are easy: Maria, Sally, Mark, AJ. The names longer than three syllables are always harder — but they make for a perfect conversation piece. But in cases like that, the name bearer — the name tag wearer — is often sick of being asked about it.

There was this one time, though, a Nigerian man began to tell me his. All I could hear were endless consonants and glottal stops. He assumed I was an American. He was getting a kick out of it, making a scene. Immediately, I felt ignorant and humiliated. Because I thought I had at least some clue — more clue than most — about what it had to take for him to get here.

So often I stand at a counter — or behind a plastic window — and I desperately calculate the timing of thanking these people by their names; as if that would make the insignificant exchange of ours more meaningful. No. I don’t expect to make up for the misery of all the corporate routines they must obey.

And I am sure they still go home in the evenings, complaining about their managers, who nag them about silly things like schedules, lunch breaks “by law” — and those fucking name tags.

“Why can’t he just leave me alone?!” they ask the rhetorical question of their equally exhausted spouses, at dinner, their words belonging to forsaken prayers. They get drowned out by the hyped-up realities happening on the television screen. And in the morning, they’ve gotta do the whole thing all over again. And if they aren’t running late, they’ve gotta remember: to grab the fucking name tag.

Still, I prefer to say these names out loud. No, I don’t expect to please. And I don’t expect to make up for the misery of all the corporate routines they must obey. I just want a little bit more humanity, in places like this. In jobs like this.

There was already plenty of sadness in the fluorescent lights buzzing above the unused-up face of the girl working at the counter of Rite-Aid.

“Why must they be running these things right now?” I thought, noticing that despite the blazing sun outside, the rows of lights remained lit. Lit and buzzing.

And yet underneath their cold rays whose pulse can send an epileptic into an episode, this girl appeared very pretty. She had long spiral curls on each side of her brown face. And because she wore not a hint of make-up, I quickly imagined her on some simple, yet still exotic shore, drinking milk out of a coconut cracked open with a machete.

I wondered if she was a student of some sort, at a community college, working this job “just until…” Or if she was a daughter of an immigrant, meant to be grateful by that very definition — for the privilege of her minimum wage and health benefits. And if she goes home, exhausted and confused:

What exactly is the meaning of this daily drudgery? And when, exactly, does it end?

And then, there was her face. It was unused-up. It had no traces of bitterness, no histories of lovers’ betrayal or disappointment. Other humans hadn’t gotten to her yet. And she smiled a little while holding a pack of cigarettes, immediately humiliated, waiting for her trainer to find the time to explain the exact procedure of selling those things. She waited, while her customer — a strange, muttering woman — scoffed and squinted her eyes at the name tag of the manager standing nearby. Watching. Why must we get off — on other people’s humiliation?

It would take a few beats for the girl to settle down. The scoffing customer would storm out, muttering about her own miseries. The trainer would return to his routine, indifferently. The manager could be traced by the jingle of his keys, as he walked away into his hideout, behind the swinging door. (At least, he had a space of his own.) But the girl would have to regroup, in front of us, and wait for the awkwardness of the moment to pass.

Yet, I insisted on holding my spot until I was called over. The girl with an unused-up face deserved her dignity.

And dignity — takes time. And space.

“I can help the next customer in line,” she said. Her voice was light, resonant. It better belonged in a choir of St. Patrick Cathedral.

I walked over:

“Hello, love.”

She wasn’t wearing a name tag, you see: that fucking name tag I used to have to wear myself, at my very first jobs as an immigrant in America. But I refused to treat her good, yet unused-up face as nameless.

So, she would be Love — the bearer of my motha’s name — at least for a few seconds that day, at Rite-Aid. She deserved a name; and if not love — she deserved some dignity.

He left in the spring. It took four months to move on — but only two to remember how to breathe normally. And because he left in the spring, I skipped the cleaning this year and hoarded for a while. Not my own things: I don’t own much and prefer to live in open spaces, spartanly. But I do tend to hold onto other people’s things; their words, mostly.

I’ve stored the sound of his voice on my answering machine, his worded messages and a shredded napkin with his absentminded scribbles.

The sound of his voice — was the first to go. I’ve done that before, so I knew better: Holding onto the voice belonged to the memory, and it could be the hardest to forget.

Harder than his touch. His touch belonged to the skin. About a million skin cells would go every day, and I hoped they would take the tactile memories of him — with them.

But the voice: The voice belonged to the brain. It was more than skin deep. It sunk in and echoed around for a bit:

“Remember me, me, me… me.”

So, I removed it, quickly, surgically, no matter how much I wanted to hoard it. That very week he announced his departure — the voice had to go.

And I remembered thinking:

“Where does everybody go — when they go?”

So many times, I’ve heard lovers speak of needing their freedom. Does freedom really need to be negotiated? And how does love impede it, anyway?

And then, they speak of “not being ready”, not being “in that place”. What place is that? I mean I understand structure in storytelling: I do it every day. I’m a fucking mythologist! But to mold one’s life to a coherent line-up of well-timed events — that seems ridiculous, and somehow offensive, to tell you the truth. To tell you my truth.

And in the mean time, the skin continued shedding layers. It wasn’t following any particular chronology. It wasn’t determined by storytelling, and its structure: chapters, afterwords, closures, etc. Every day, about a million skin cells would go, and I would hope they took the tactile memories of him — with them.

The written messages would go next. At first, I would sort through them, like quirkily shaped pieces of a puzzle. I’d spread them out on the floor of the joint, long overdue for its spring cleaning. I’d tack ‘em onto the empty wall. I swear to god, I knew there was a whole picture somewhere in there, even though I’ve never seen it (not even on the box cover). If only I could figure out the line-up, I thought, I could understand “that place”. You know: “That place”, to which they go — when they go.

So, I would shuffle the worded messages, measure their jagged edges against against each other. I mean, I understand structure in storytelling: I do it every day. I’m a fucking mythologist! But with these bits that I was hoarding — all over my joint — something still wasn’t making sense.

Viscerally! Viscerally, I knew that something wasn’t complete. Perhaps, the picture wasn’t even there and all I’d been twirling in my fingers were orphaned pieces of multiple puzzles, as if solving a silly prank by a bored rascal. Soon, it all began to seem ridiculous, and somehow offensive, to tell you the truth. To tell you my truth.

So, the words would go, mere weeks after he announced his departure.

And I remembered thinking:

“Is he going — to ‘that place’?”

And in the mean time, the skin continued shedding layers. A million skin cells would go, methodically taking the tactile memories of him — with them.

But what to do with the shredded napkin with his absentminded scribbles? Where to store the fortune from a cookie that spoke of love and ended one of our shared meals? The ticket stubs. The birthday cards. The tags from my suitcase with which I travelled to meet him in my two favorite cities.

They were the palpable proofs of our story. Of our unfinished puzzle. And I would hoard them for a while (at least a season past the spring, to be exact, never having done any spring cleaning). My hopes for his change of mind had long been deleted along the sound of his voice. After a while, I didn’t even want a reunion, let alone a return. As much I as I could accept, he had departed for “that place.” You know: “That place”, to which they go — when they go.

I don’t go to “that place”, because the places where I dwell, I’ve chosen quite carefully; and I don’t take them for granted. I want to travel, sure, often alone to my two favorite cities. But I don’t crave being anywhere else but here. And if I do — I just go. That’s — my fucking truth!

Neither do I reconstruct my life to fit a story. There is no need for that: I am a fucking mythologist, I study stories every day! Besides, to mold my life to a coherent line-up of well-timed events — that seems ridiculous, and somehow offensive. It robs a life of its magical unpredictability. So, instead of waiting to be “in that place” — waiting “to be ready” — I’ve always found myself up for it.

All of it:

Life, and the humanity that comes with it.

Love, and the humility that precedes.

Loss, and the utter humiliation that often follows.

But in the mean time, through all of it — life, love, loss — the skin continued shedding layers. A million skin cells would go, every day, methodically taking the tactile memories of him — with them.

Perhaps, I was hoarding the palpable proofs of our story to teach the new skin cells about what was being mourned. That way, when the old skin crawled, they wouldn’t be clueless.

Eventually though, the new cells — took over. One morning, I woke up to find them in a majority; and they no longer wanted to hear the old story. They wanted new ones: new loves, stories, puzzles. So, the palpable proofs had to go.

The old skin cells, shed all over this joint, were the last to clean up. They had long expired, taking the tactile memories of someone I was now willing to forget — with them.